Quarter Inch foot? Pah, who needs them...

Honestly? Well I do for a start!

I was a bit concerned at the rather wobbly appearance of my Block Lotto quilt corners and fell to musing that if I was really really careful with cutting and really really careful with pressing and really really careful with using the sewing guide line on my machine, then quite frankly I should be able to get corners to match.

The bottom and the right side stripy sections match perfectly with the central panel and corner blocks.  But the top and left stripy sections are way out all over the place.  Question is, can I be bothered to redo it, or merely to use it as one of my prototypes for my 'using up my stash and selling the results online' products (this making and selling project is going so slowly)?  Cos summer is getting on, and this particular product will need testing whilst there's sunshine around...

Whilst thinking about that I started sourcing other fabrics I need (water resistant etc) to complete various product ideas, which has gone quite well. 

And as a result of the mixed results posted above, my absolute star of a mum sent me a Quarter Inch Foot, but didn't know about the 0.5cm depth rule that Royal Mail now has on pricing normal sized letters, so she underpaid the postage by 10 pence sterling.  The Royal Mail stuck a card through the door asking for £1.10 (yes a £1 penalty, ridiculous!) and a visit to the Sorting Office to hand over the cash in return, or you could stick stamps worth £1.10, pop the card in the postbox and wait for your newly franked post to arrive.

Except that it's not a great idea in our area right now to actually expect post to arrive through the door - our current postman keeps putting our post in next door down the hill's door, and next door up the hill's post in our door, and so on all up the road.  Whilst it's turned into something of a friendly ritual to go and retrieve your post from next door down, and give their post to next door up (and vice versa depending on which way he travelled up/down the street on any given day) - I don't want to strain the system too far by adding to Mr Postie's workload in case he just gives up entirely! 

And anyway a trip to the Sorting Office isn't too hard, it's only down the road a mile or so, there's lots of buses every few minutes and lots of available free parking.  But the big question is, do I take the bus or the car? 

As choices go, the criterion I use is going to seem rather odd to anyone that doesn't live in a street that's got free parking and is very close to the city which means all the parking gets nabbed by city commuters and leaves every local visitor fighting for spots previously occupied by residents.  I had a good parking space just over a hundred metres or so up the road - so the criterion was, what am I doing in the next week that means I'll need to load the car up (ie a trip to the rubbish tip/ recycling centre) so I need to be close to the house to minimise the number of wheelbarrow trips and possible parking fines which are the usual alternatives.  So with that in mind, I took the bus, but really I needn't have bothered as yesterday after driving to church I got a much better parking place closer to the house so I won't need the barrow at all.  Success!  Now all I need is for the rain to stop and the bagged up garden waste to dry out a bit to go in the car....

Back to the fabric though - it's some I double dyed myself.  I am thinking of maybe doing some more and selling that too, as I've got lots of raw materials, and it doesn't take as much thought as actually making something saleable out of it!

There are lots of people on Judy's Blog who are very successful at quarter inch seams - go see how the real enthusiasts do it - she's also got some really good posts about bees, her pantry and kitchen creation plans, well worth a look!